Event Theme: Anger

This summer, five Black women have died in jail. And 9 Black parishioners were murdered while praying. Rage is not just righteous; it’s the only rational response to White supremacy.

Image: Damemagazine.com

How could I not be angry? Most of Black America was grieving and enraged. The news of Charleston was difficult to process, even more so while riding a D.C.-bound train packed with White people, most of them dressed in business attire, who seemed oblivious to the tragedy. It took everything I had in me to keep from erupting in rage in that Amtrak car.

I thought about racial terrorism and its larger history while a nearby White woman worked a New York Times crossword puzzle, and sipped her Starbucks coffee. I raged thinking how not even churches are safe from the pathologies of White supremacy. Others talked on their cell phones about trivial shit or tapped on their laptop keyboards and tablets.

It was clear I was not among friends or a community that shared my sadness, anger, or angst about what it means to be Black in America in the 21st century. A pair of women sitting behind me chatted and laughed loudly. They were free of worry, they were fearless and enjoying their privilege to live, to exist apart from the horrors of racial violence. Their joy made me resentful. Fighting waves of grief and tears of sorrow, I got up to change seats to get away from the noise of White privilege.

Image: The EPA team accidentally released waste water into a creek which flows into the Animas River. Photograph: EPA/Rex Shutterstock

The Obama administration was scrambling Wednesday to manage growing anger over a government-caused spill on the Animas River in Colorado, announcing investigations into the incident while declaring contaminant levels in the water had returned to pre-accident levels.

Despite the pronouncement, however, damage to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standing in the region appeared far from recovered, with state and tribal officials describing a lackluster initial response to the Aug. 5 incident that unleashed 3 million gallons of mustard-colored mine waste into the river near Durango.